that he should have kept her corpse, as he would have been able to position it in ways not possible with his human subjects. Reception Because of the film's more overtly sado-masochistic theme, Beauty's Exotic Dance: Torture! received less critical acclaim than the previous two entries in Tanaka's Showa trilogy-- A Woman Called Sada Abe (1975) and Watcher in the Attic (1976). However, in their Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia: The Sex Films, Thomas and Yuko Mihara Weisser give Beauty's Exotic Dance: Torture! a top-rating of four out of four stars. Noting Tanaka's use of "dark images, obsessive nihilistic philosophy, and gravely somber atmosphere", they write, "Like all of the movies from Tanaka's Mad Love period, it's filmed in matter-of-fact, non-flinching style, creating a dangerous ambivalence towards traditional concepts of right and wrong, sanity and insanity." Allmovie calls the film "an amoral masterpiece" and one of "the most disturbing films ever released by the Nikkatsu studio". Writing that the dark and oppressive nature of the film works in its favor, the review concludes, "[t]he cumulative effect is quite powerful, and not for the faint of heart." Availability Beauty's Exotic Dance: Torture! was released theatrically in Japan on February 23, 1977. It was released for home video in VHS format on January 12, 1996,. It was released on DVD on September 22, 2006 as part of Geneon's fifth wave of Nikkatsu Roman porno series. Bibliography English Japanese Notes 1977 films Films directed by Noboru Tanaka 1970s Japanese-language films Nikkatsu films Pink films 1970s Japanese films